Kintsugi The Teacup Tales
by whodreamedit
Summary: Abigail Hobbs stood in the kitchen and stared at Hannibal Lecter. "...Are you going to kill me?" she asked. And then...? During that cold Baltimore winter, what happened to Abigail Hobbs?
1. Chapter 1

_**Kintsugi (金継ぎ**__**?)**__ (Japanese: golden joinery) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer resin dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum a method similar to the maki-e technique.__**As a philosophy it speaks to breakage and repair becoming part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.**_

_**PRELUDE**_

There was a place she went to, a half-formed, drowsy incoherence that occupied the liminal frontier between sleep and wakefulness. She was aware of its existence only in the fragmented moments of clarity that threatened at the edges of it, those times when she would wake into a darkness so oppressive that it seemed to thicken the air. In those brief seconds, as she fought the rising panic, as she waited for the uncannily familiar sensation of something cold dripping into her veins, she knew with absolute certainty that the mind-palace was a dream state only.

And then, sluggish and gentle, the waves would take her, tugging her away from the dark room, the sting in her arm, the heaviness of her body. She would close her eyes—had they ever been open?—and allow the warmth and light of the dream to absorb her. The doors of the palace broke apart, splintered with the grace and fire of late-afternoon sunlight.

* * *

Everything hurt, and everything was fuzzy. Those were the first two things she noticed: pain. Disorientation.

Even before she opened her eyes, the room was spinning. When she _tried_ to open them, to ground herself, her eyelids wouldn't cooperate. She tried to wiggle her fingers, her toes. Everything felt weighted, like the time she'd been put under to have her wisdom teeth out.

She'd clawed her way to this point before, to the darkness and slow drip of intravenous comfort. But something was different this time. The blackness behind her eyes seemed less impermeable. Lighter, even. And the warm pull back to the tide of unconsciousness was weaker, barely there at all.

_No, I don't want this. Don't make me._ Better to lie in dappled sunlight on the floor of her mind-palace. Better to suspend forever in a sea of opiates and imagery. That pleasant, surreal world of metaphor and ambient light. Everything safe. Everything warm.

And Will had been there, hadn't he…?

But the details were fading, replaced instead by an awareness of the stiffness in her limbs, a slight but jarring pain in the side of her head. She could feel her legs now, knew that they were pinned in place by a set of warm and neatly tucked blankets. Her arms, too, were stuck in place, laid neatly at her sides on soft sheets. She opened her mouth, moved her jaw side to side, clicking. Testing. It felt weird, as if her face belonged to someone else.

She could hear someone speaking to her. The voice was distorted, not quite right, like hearing an old recording played through a dying speaker. She couldn't be sure where the sound was coming from—it seemed to be everywhere, to be nowhere. Directionless.

A man's voice, a voice she recognized.

He was saying her name. Repeating it, like a prayer: _Abigail. Are you awake, Abigail? Wake up…_

A memory. The slow stirring of it, cold in her chest and echoed by a renewed jolt of pain through the side of her head. Something bad had happened. She knew it completely, but the particulars were difficult to access—as if the memory had been cut out, removed. Dread clawed up inside her, crouched panther-like in the back of her throat. Was she going to scream? Could she scream?

Something bad had happened. Something terrible.


	2. Kaiseki - The Tabula Rasa

Bedelia Du Maurier straightened the single sheet of paper on the polished surface of her mahogany desk. The paper was blank, unlined, marked only by a monogram in the top right-hand corner that bore her name, her qualifications, and the address and telephone number of her office. She took a half step back, head tilted, examined the paper for a moment before reaching out once more to push it a half inch to the right. She frowned. No, still not right. She brushed the pristine corner of the page with a well-manicured fingernail, moved it a fraction of an angle right again. Another step back to survey her work. The paper, a pleasing shade of egg shell white, imported from Cavallini &amp; Co, Italy, stood in stark contrast to the dark of the wood, a perfect, pale rectangle in the very center of the empty desk.

_Tabula Rasa_, Bedelia thought. _Maybe it is possible to start again_.

She turned away from the troubling blankness of the paper, looked instead at the clock on the mantelpiece. Another few minutes. He was always on time. There was something to be said for that, she thought—_punctuality_. In that respect, at least, Hannibal Lecter was reassuringly predictable.

Bedelia moved from the desk to the low slung armchair, trailed her fingertips over the back of it, but did not sit. She was not in the habit of appearing too casual, and it was her custom to show her patients into the office herself, to remain by the door until they had taken their seats. Of course, with Hannibal, there was a certain…guarded warmth. Genuine or artificial, she was no longer sure. Spend enough time in the company of monsters, and you just might start to think like one.

She tried not to dwell on her feelings. Feelings, after all, were unreliable. Facts, statistics, cogent and logical trains of thought—these were the things that could be counted on. And the fact was, there were far too many secrets now, between she and Hannibal. Truths that like a dark web spidered around them, bound them inextricably to one another. How she felt about it was immaterial, every bit as useless as the blank sheet of paper that would, once again, remain blank throughout the duration of her session with Dr. Lecter. Because what was there to write, really? What was there to say?

_Hannibal Lecter is dangerous. Hannibal Lecter is a monster. _

Tabula rasa. They would remain in a state of perpetual blankess, no record of what had passed between them, no ink and no paper, no visible mark on the world. As it ought to be. As it _must_ be.

The minute hand of the ornamental clock snapped one fraction closer to the hour. Interesting, to consider visibility. To consider the marks one left in one's wake, the stains on one's self, the stains one left on other people.

Will Graham: Hannibal's most obvious _stain_. And not one that would be so easily washed out, either.

When the _situation_ had shaken out, Hannibal had hardly needed to confess. It had been all over the news, and word of Will's arrest, of the evidence that led to his incarceration had reached Bedelia before Hannibal had placed so much as the toe of his fine leather shoe over the threshold of her office. No, he hadn't needed to say anything. Had needed only to settle himself carefully into his customary seat opposite her, look at her with an expression as blank and uncluttered as the manila folder she kept in her filing cabinet, the one marked 'L' for _Lecter_, or 'L' for something else, perhaps.

No feeling. Just facts. Just the fact of Hannibal, sitting in the chair opposite her, watching her closely for the slightest change in her demeanor, the smallest alteration or waver in the pitch of her voice, anything that might indicate to him that she knew what he had done.

And she had known, hadn't she? Immediately the news of the Hobbs girl's murder had broken.

_The FBI has released no official statement on the disappearance of Abigail Hobbs, but an officer, who requested to remain anonymous, has stated the half-digested remains of the young girl's ear were found in the sink of Will Graham, who had been unofficially consulting on the case of the Minnesota Shrike _and _the Chesapeake Ripper. Mr. Graham, who worked at the FBI in an educational capacity but was prevented from joining the bureau as a field agent after failing several psychiatric exams, is said to have been behaving erratically for some time, frequently suffering what co-workers describe as panic attacks while surveying crime scenes, and complaining of black outs and lost time. A source close to the FBI refused to go on record with any definitive accusations, but stated it "seemed likely" that the murders Mr. Graham was investigating may well have been his own. _

It would do no good to weep for Will Graham. Not that she was in the habit of weeping, at the best of times. Everyone dealt with monsters in their own way. Bedelia was careful to formulate no opinion on the subject.

But the way Hannibal had looked at her, when she had asked how he felt about Will Graham's arrest. That perfect, impassive stare. The almost imperceptible arch of his eyebrow. The challenge, in his eyes.

He had wanted her to share it, this fresh new darkness.

Bedelia crossed preemptively to the office door, paused for a moment to open one of the large cabinets that lined the room. Office supplies, in most of them. Old files (none of them quite so empty as Dr. Lecter's), and more of that excellent Italian paper stock. Drug samples, academic journals, odds and ends that had, over the years, been left in the office. One of her perversions, she supposed—she couldn't bring to throw it out, any of it, these relics abandoned by their owners. Hide it away, yes. Hide it all away. But don't discard it.

But it wasn't a broken umbrella she pulled from the cupboard, nor a key chain, nor a solitary glove. Bedelia took out the bag, an unremarkable looking thing of dark suede, about the size and shape of an old fashioned doctor's satchel. She'd attended to the details, of course—made sure it wasn't so fancy as to appear new, or out of the ordinary—just luxurious enough to seem as though it might have belonged to Hannibal for years. Not entirely in his style, perhaps, but then Hannibal's style was singular, and remarkably difficult to replicate. But it shouldn't attract suspicion, at least. Supposing he was even being watched.

She walked back to the center of the room, placed the bag in the center of her desk, over the blank, accusatory stationary. The minute hand inched one further fraction towards two, and Bedelia unzipped the bag, slipped her hand inside. Best to check. Best to make sure everything was there.

Clothes, mostly. Hard to approximate the size—she'd never met the Hobbs girl, knew her only through Hannibal's descriptions (though his attention to detail was second to none, which had made her task somewhat easier). Underwear, obviously. A pair of jeans, and a couple of t-shirts. Sweaters, too—it was so _cold_ down there.

She had to admit, she'd never seen _that_ coming. Had not for an instant suspected, when Hannibal had invited her to dinner, that the _weight_ he spoke of, the burden he needed her help to carry might be a teenage girl.

Bedelia had never thought of herself as maternal, had not the slightest impulse to nurture. The world was ugly and harsh enough to those who sought to protect their _own_ interests. But seeing the Hobbs girl, pale as antler bone, coiled on the floor of the starkly lit cellar, breathing so shallow that is was hard to tell whether she was alive at all...

And would it have been better, that way—if Abigail had been dead? If Hannibal had dragged Bedelia down to the basement to see a body? Was the alternative any less monstrous?

Facts. Just the facts. A heavily sedated girl recovering from major surgery in the basement of her patient's house. One more dark thread binding Hannibal and Bedelia closer together.

"It seemed cruel," he had said, one hand coming to rest ever so softly at her waist. "to kill her. Cruel to Abigail, yes—but crueler, I think, to Will. I wasn't ready for that. To be that particular demon. It wasn't yet the time…"

Bedelia's hands, as she zipped the bag shut, did not shake. It was a practiced art, this complete and total dominion over her physiological responses. It was, she felt, what had kept her alive.

The second hand bypassed twelve with an insistent _tick_, and the door, as if mechanically tied to the rhythms of the clockwork, gave up the hollow sound of Hannibal's white fist as it knocked.


End file.
